The Cure emerges from grief to show Primavera its most festive side

BarcelonaThe Cure's return to the stage, after a year and a half hiatus, showed them in a very different incarnation from their previous visit to the Palau Sant Jordi in November 2022. At that time, they were presenting the album Songs of a lost world, marked by the death of the parents and a brother of the band's leader, Robert Smith. The group has also lost guitarist and keyboardist Perry Bamonte, who died in December. Despite this accumulation of mourning, The Cure, who triumphantly took the main stage at Primavera Sound as headliners this Friday, left all that grief behind to offer their most festive and festival-appropriate repertoire, with a very generous selection of singles, out of the fifty or so they have released in almost half a century of existence.

It was a long concert, typical of the band, two and a half hours. Eden Gallup, son of bassist Simon Gallup —the longest-serving member by far, apart from the singer himself— took on Bamonte's duties, as he has on occasion in cases of temporary absences, but they have not announced whether his incorporation will now be as a full member. The band sounded as always: compact and winning, with songs honed by a thousand concerts, although Smith always knows how to give it a playful twist thanks to a voice that remains intact despite already bordering on seventy. Classics from the eighties like The walk, Let’s go to bed, Play for today or The lovecats were sung by the audience, not just the sung parts, but also the instrumental ones. That was The Cure in their most lololo version. And it worked. 

These desires to mark a festival profile meant that, even though since the release of the last album they had already announced that they had recorded material to release a second album of a similar tone, the group did not take advantage of this return to premiere any, as a taste. There were gestures for the most hardened fans, such as bringing back "2 late", which was the B-side of "Love song", and which they hadn't played since 2019. Mint car", alt.end", and Wrong number" had also been on the bench for a long time and on Friday they re-entered the rotation. Rescuing this last song suggests that The Cure, beyond their typical image of depressive gothic lords, also want to claim a fairly pure rock and roll soul, as was also seen with Hot, hot, hot!!!", which dispenses with usual pedals like the flanger or chorus in favor of more natural, less atmospheric riffss. After all, the next Rolling Stones album features a collaboration with Robert Smith that reinforces this taste for pure rock.

"I will lose myself in time, it won’t be long". These are verses from the song Endsong" which closes the group's last album, one of the most heartbreaking songs they have ever written and which served to close the main block of the performance, before the encores. Judging by the euphoric shout of "I hope to see you soon!" with which he said goodbye and also the preparations announced to celebrate the band's 50th anniversary in 2028, everything suggests that Smith and company feel stronger to continue defending their legacy than the lyrics might suggest.

From the industry to the avant-garde

Hours earlier, the also veteran Einstürzende Neubauten filled the Auditorium stage with all the scrap that usually accompanies these postmodern luthiers. Although they are no longer that industrial sonic assault that scared the neighborhood cats with their squeaks, this more controlled and avant-garde version of the German group remains intense and contains its own grammar full of interesting sonorities. A touching and comical moment was when leader Blixa Bargeld grandly presented the shopping cart with which they would later perform Grazer Damm: he explained that the one from 1984 was already too rusty. And since the new one must have had a GPS chip inside, as he recounted, someone from New Zealand must have been wondering how on earth that stolen cart had ended up so far away. 

The concert served to introduce the new member of the group, Josefine Lukschy, who replaces the historic Alexandre Hacke, with more than 40 years of career in the group. They were not easy shoes to fill, because in Neubauten the bass line is the essential cushion that allows all the metallic percussion of the rest of the band and Bargeld's iconic screams to be built upon it. But she graduated with honors and received the loudest applause of the afternoon. The concert drew mainly from their latest albums and worked very well because it is in live performances where the physicality of their music is best appreciated. Bargeld was happy, even euphoric, and dedicated a song to his trans son, encouraging the audience to rebel against biological determinism. 

Another highlight of the day was the performance by the Swedish band Viagra Boys. Their wild rock deliberately wallows in aesthetics — singer Sebastian Murphy is a poem in himself — but the band is incredibly tight and, at the same time, they can afford jams like the one in the final song, Research chemicals with which they turned this ode to a bad trip into an explosion of paranoid notes that lasted a quarter of an hour thanks to the free jazz solo by saxophonist Oskar Carls. In tune with the political charge of their lyrics, which are both delirious and sarcastic, there was an applauded anti-fascist exhortation and shouts in favor of Palestine. The performance time felt short even though it ended at four in the morning and there was great fever among the audience with classics like Troglodyte, Ain’t no thief or Man made of meat, which kicked things off. Of course, fewer people made it to the end of the concert than started it: it wasn't two minutes before security staff kindly invited any audience member with flying tendencies to leave the venue.

The aspirants to the pop throne

Primavera doesn't just feed on rock, even though this year the more commercial pop side has eased up a bit. Besides Addison Rae and her high-voltage (but cheesy) show where twerkings were celebrated more than choruses, the other aspiring diva of the day was the British Jade, who has shown an energy that links her to Lady Gaga, even though her show doesn't yet have the artistic aspirations of the American. It's understandable: Jade has just one solo album published, That’s showbiz baby (previously she was part of the girl band Little Mix, created in the eighth edition of The X Factor UK). Her proposal is a sophisticated party that mixes pop, dance, R&B, disco and very explicit references to Motown, such as the sample of Stop in The name of love by The Supremes, which she uses in the song Before your break my heart.